A mystical experience, no matter what else, is a subjective occurrence in the psyche. However, when it appears in the psychoanalytic consulting room, its origin, content, and meaning are unknowable. Yet it is there in the room, and it must be addressed. It is not a minor illusion but rather one that requires attention as its occurrence may lead to a profound alteration of consciousness and, as Carl Jung suggests, a cure for neurosis. Leslie Stein interviewed twenty-nine mystics in order to understand the origin, progression, phasing, emotions, and individual variations of a mystical experience in order to make sense of how it should be addressed, the appropriate analytic attitude in the face of a mystery, the way to work with its content, and its psychological meaning. In doing so, he uncovered that there may be specific development markers that create a proclivity to be receptive to such an experience that has clinical significance for psychoanalysis.

In Lily Dale, New York, the dead don't die. Instead, they flit among the elms and stroll along the streets. According to spiritualists who have ruled this community for five generations, the spirits never go away--and they stay anything but quiet. Every summer twenty thousand guests come to consult the town's mediums in hopes of communicating with dead relatives or catching a glimpse of the future. Weaving past with present, the living with the dead, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Christine Wicker investigates the longings for love and connection that draw visitors to "the Dale," introducing us to a colorful cast of characters along the way--including such famous visitors as Susan B. Anthony, Harry Houdini, and Mae West. Laugh-out-loud funny at times, this honest portrayal shows us that ultimately it doesn't matter what we believe; it is belief itself that can transform us all.

From the bestselling author of Fingerprints of the Gods, and creator of the explosive Netflix series, Ancient Apocalypse ____________________________________ 'Supernatural: of or relating to things that cannot be explained according to natural laws.' 'As gripping as any thriller' New Statesman 'Provocative and fascinating' Daily Mail ____________________________________ Less than 50,000 years ago mankind had no art, no religion, no sophisticated symbolism, no innovative thinking. Then, in a dramatic and electrifying change, described by scientists as "the greatest riddle in human history", all the skills and qualities that we value most highly in ourselves appeared already fully formed, as though bestowed on us by hidden powers. Graham Hancock sets out to investigate this mysterious "before-and-after moment" and to discover the truth about the influences that gave birth to the modern human mind. His quest takes him on a journey of adventure from the stunningly beautiful painted caves of prehistoric France, Spain and Italy to remote rock shelters in the mountains of South Africa where he finds a treasure trove of extraordinary Stone Age art, ending in the depths of the Amazon rainforest, where he drinks the powerful plant hallucinogen Ayahuasca with Indian shamans, whose paintings contain images of "supernatural beings" identical to the animal-human hybrids depicted in prehistoric caves and rock shelters. Could these "supernaturals" be the ancient teachers of mankind? And is human evolution in fact more purposeful and intelligent that we have barely even begun to understand? ____________________________________ 'A welcome exploration and celebration of the mystery inside our skulls' Guardian 'Extraordinary' Daily Express 'Intelligent and articulate . . . his writing is as expert as you would expect from an esteemed international correspondent' Scotsman 'Hancock's most important book . . . Quite stunning' Independent

Renowned psychic, spiritual teachers, and #1 New York Times bestseller author Sylvia Browne leads readers on an adventure of the spirit and gives them a surprising glimpse into the next world. Filled with stunning revelations and stories of those who have visited "the other side," this uplifting book is the ultimate guide to finding peace in the afterlife.

Is there a higher purpose behind the relationships we have with domesticated animals? The answer is a resounding "yes". This book will deepen our understanding of the mystery of the animal kingdom. This compilation from the books of Alice Bailey explains the divine purpose of our association with domesticated animals, and the important role humanity has to play in their evolution.

Susan Chernak McElroy credits her astounding triumph over cancer to the love of the animals in her life. In Animals as Teachers & Healers she shares her remarkable story along with true stories from others who have been touched by the loving energies of animals.

A woman escapes an abusive relationship by observing how her boyfriend treated her two Arabian horses . . . a German shepherd cocoons its body around a toddler during a house fire . . . a coyote gives a couple wisdom about their rebellious daughter . . . a little three-legged frog imparts a valuable lesson to a frightened nine-year-old girl. Unique and compelling, Animals as Teachers & Healers invites us to reconnect with the boundless gifts of joy, wisdom, and deep healing that flow from our ageless and intimate relationship with the animal kingdom.

Originally published in 1974, Ritual in Industrial Society is based on several years' research including interviews and observations into the importance of ritual in industrial society within modern Britain. The book addresses how identity and meaning for people of all occupations and social classes can be derived through rituals and provides an expansive and diverse examination of how rituals are used in society, including in birth, marriage and death. The book offers an examination into the use of symbolic action in the body to articulate experiences which words cannot adequately handle and suggests that this enables modern men and women to overcome the mind-body splits which characterise modern technological society. In addition to this, the book examines ritual as a tool for articulating and sharing religious experiences, a point often overlooked by more intellectual approaches to religion in sociology. In addition to this, the book covers an exploration into ritual in social groups and how this is used to develop a sense of belonging among members. The book will be of interest to sociologists as well as academics of religion and theology, social workers and psychotherapists.

A fascinating story of spirits and conjurors, skeptics and converts in the second half of nineteenth century America viewed through the lives of Kate and Maggie Fox, the sisters whose purported communication with the dead gave rise to the Spiritualism movement - and whose recanting forty years later is still shrouded in mystery.

In March of 1848, Kate and Maggie Fox - sisters aged 11 and 14 - anxiously reported to a neighbor that they had been hearing strange, unidentified sounds in their house. From a sequence of knocks and rattles translated by the young girls as a "voice from beyond," the Modern Spiritualism movement was born.

"Talking to the Dead" follows the fascinating story of the two girls who were catapulted into an odd limelight after communicating with spirits that March night. Within a few years, tens of thousands of Americans were flocking to seances. An international movement followed. Yet thirty years after those first knocks, the sisters shocked the country by denying they had ever contacted spirits. Shortly after, the sisters once again changed their story and reaffirmed their belief in the spirit world. Weisberg traces not only the lives of the Fox sisters and their family (including their mysterious Svengali-like sister Leah) but also the social, religious, economic and political climates that provided the breeding ground for the movement. While this is a thorough, compelling overview of a potent time in US history, it is also an incredible ghost story.

An entertaining read - a story of spirits and conjurors, skeptics and converts - "Talking to the Dead" is full of emotion and surprise. Yet it will also provoke questions that were being asked in the 19thcentury, and are still being asked today - how do we know what we know, and how secure are we in our knowledge?

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries secular French scholars started re-engaging with religious ideas, particularly mystical ones. Mysticism in the French Tradition introduces key philosophical undercurrents and trajectories in French thought that underpin and arise from this engagement, as well as considering earlier French contributions to the development of mysticism. Filling a gap in the literature, the book offers critical reflections on French scholarship in terms of its engagement with its mystical and apophatic dimensions. A multiplicity of factors converge to shape these encounters with mystical theology: feminist, devotional and philosophical treatments as well as literary, historical, and artistic approaches. The essays draw these into conversation. Bringing together an international and interdisciplinary range of contributions from both new and established scholars, this book provides access to the melting pot out of which the mystical tradition in France erupted in the twenty-first century, and from which it continues to challenge theology today.

Wonder and Skepticism in the Middle Ages explores the response by medieval society to tales of marvels and the supernatural, which ranged from firm belief to outright rejection, and asks why the believers believed, and why the skeptical disbelieved. Despite living in a world whose structures more often than not supported belief, there were still a great many who disbelieved, most notably scholastic philosophers who began a polemical programme against belief in marvels. Keagan Brewer reevaluates the Middle Ages' reputation as an era of credulity by considering the evidence for incidences of marvels, miracles and the supernatural and demonstrating the reasons people did and did not believe in such things. Using an array of contemporary sources, he shows that medieval responders sought evidence in the commonality of a report, similarity of one event to another, theological explanations and from people with status to show that those who believed in marvels and miracles did so only because the wonders had passed evidentiary testing. In particular, he examines both emotional and rational reactions to wondrous phenomena, and why some were readily accepted and others rejected. This book is an important contribution to the history of emotions and belief in the Middle Ages.

In Mystical Theology and Contemporary Spiritual Practice several leading scholars explore key themes within the Christian mystical tradition, contemporary and historical. The overall aim of the book is to demonstrate the relevance of mystical theology to contemporary spiritual practice. Attention is given to the works of Baron von Hugel, Vladimir Lossky, Margery Kempe, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Merton, and Francisco de Osuna, as well as to a wide range of spiritual practices, including pilgrimage, spiritual direction, contemplative prayer and the quotidian spirituality of the New Monasticism. Christian mystical theology is shown to be a living tradition, which has vibrant and creative new expressions in contemporary spiritual practice. It is argued that mystical theology affirms something both ordinary and extraordinary which is fundamental to the Christian experience of prayer.

Exploration of the interface between mystical theology and continental philosophy is a defining feature of the current intellectual and even devotional climate. But to what extent and in what depth are these disciplines actually speaking to one another; or even speaking about the same phenomena? This book draws together original contributions by leading and emerging international scholars, delineating emerging debates in this growing and dynamic field of research, and spanning mystical and philosophical traditions from the ancient, to the medieval, modern, and contemporary. At the heart of which lies Meister Eckhart, perhaps the single most influential Christian mystic for modern times. The book is organised around significant historical and contemporary figures who speak across the intersections of philosophy and theology, offering new insights into key interlocutors such as Pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, Isaac Luria, Eckhart, Hegel, Heidegger, Marion, Kierkegaard, Deleuze, Laruelle, and Zizek. Designed both to contribute to current trends in mystical theology and philosophy, and elicit dialogue and debate from further afield, this book speaks within an emerging space exploring the retrieval of the mystical within a post-secular context.

'A time will come when your innermost voice will speak to you, saying 'This is my path, here I shall find peace, I will pursue this path, come what may' If you will persist and are patient, and above all never lose faith, your path will lead you unerringly to your goal' White Eagle's earliest programmes for his students at the White Eagle Lodge included classes on spiritual unfoldment. The subject included training in clairvoyance (real clear seeing, for instance on the true nature of the person, not shallow prediction), meditation, right living, learning about the great laws of life such as reincarnation and karma and about healing. Spiritual Unfoldment 1 is compiled largely from teachings at those classes given over many years. It will lead the seeker down the first roads upon a path of absolute simplicity-but the truest path is also the simplest. Carefully revised and with a new introduction, this edition brings a classic book to the forefront, before a whole new generation of spiritual seekers.

A story from the island of Iona in the Scottish Hebrides. On St Columba's bay, the beach where the monks first landed in their coracles from Ireland, you can still find the most beautiful green stones, polished by the sea. This is the legend of how these wonderful stones came to be, and why they are there to this very day.

The journey that The Beatles made to India in 1968 is considered one of the key events for western pop culture. The journey that The Beatles made to India in 1968 caused an enormous stir in the international media and was fundamental in spreading a certain interest for the East that influenced music, literature, cinema, fashion and customs at the close of that decade. The title, Nothing Is Real, is a famous lyric in The Beatles' song Strawberry Fields Forever, inviting people to search beyond appearances with a spiritual and metaphysical tension. The book invokes that extraordinary moment through reports from the period, historical photographs, artworks by international artists such as Ettore Sottsass, Alighiero Boetti, Francesco Clemente, Luigi Ontani, Aldo Mondino and Julian Schnabel, as well as through album, book and magazine covers..

Throughout recorded history it has been thought that only those with a special gift could connect with a spirit guide, their higher self or the universal mind. However, this step-by-step guide to the art of channeling aims to show how anyone can be open to higher dimensions. Channeling is a skill which can be learned. This book provides safe and simple processes, and includes chapters on how to tell if you are ready, who the guides are, how to attract a high level guide and how to go into trance.

What is spirituality? Does it enable us to be better persons? Is spirituality related to religion? These days, is it even relevant? On college campuses, does it promote student well-being? Does it further moral growth? Can spirituality make a difference in healthcare? What about social justice and service to the marginalized? This rich collection of essays by respected scholars and practitioners in diverse fields in academic, healthcare, social justice, and interfaith contexts addresses these questions in strikingly profound and meaningful ways. Their voices offer alternatives to the prevailing notion of spirituality as a purely private matter, and make a case for living spiritually through deep and genuine engagement with others, bridging our inherent and original fault-line of Self and Other. Their keen observations resuscitate the spiritual fabric of defiance against and liberation from forces of oppression which show their face not only through chronic inequities and social injustice but in consumer capitalism's grip on our souls. This volume's dispatch to our minds and hearts is timely in an age of looming cynicism, pessimism, fear, and distrust. In carving out a renewed sense of what lies at the heart of living a life of the spirit, or spirituality, it offers an antidote to our widespread hermeneutic of suspicion. None of the authors claims to encapsulate one, pure meaning of the spiritual. Yet they share one collective voice: spirituality is indeed genuine when it calls forth compassion and wears the worn and tangled face of humaneness, freeing ourselves from the prison of ego. Here we find messages of hope, much needed in a time when our society seems increasingly shadowed by dark clouds. These essays remind us of what's right in the world.

'She can pick up personal facts impossible to fathom by deduction or guesswork.' JEANETTE WINTERSON 'A marvellous book.' DR EBEN ALEXANDER __________________________________ 'We all have psychic experiences in our lives that connect us to one another and to those we love on the Other Side. Not just once in a while, but all the time.' Laura Lynne Jackson has been receiving communications from the afterlife since she was a child. In The Light Between Us she takes us through her struggle to come to peace with her gift and use it to help others. Through her moving and uplifting stories of the people she has helped, Laura Lynne shares her knowledge of how to understand these messages of love, and how we can use those lessons to help us live more peacefully in the present. What The Light Between Us has meant to readers: 'A genuine and honest testimonial' 'This book has made me laugh, made me cry and make me think' 'I love this book. It really helps you realise that the ones we love are never far from us.' 'The stories are heartfelt and had me in tears towards the end' 'Very uplifting' 'It has given me so much comfort and understanding'